This wasn’t meant to happen. He was the only person in the world.
She stood knee-deep in the coppery water; her shift pooling around her like a lily. She pounded her petticoats against the rock with fragile white arms. Her grey dress lay on the bank. She had not chosen to wear such a dress. He felt this instinctively. Someone had given it to her; forced her into it perhaps. She was not a wearer of grey. She was pinks and blues and yellows. Why the grey dress, he wondered, listening to the thwack thwack of linen against stone. She stepped out of the water, her underclothes clinging to the narrow curves of her legs. What would she do, he wondered, if he came from the trees and put his hand to her face, or her arm, or the protrusion of her hips? Would she believe it if he said: I just want to remember? I just want to remember how it feels to be human.
“What are you doing, angel?” Grace sung suddenly, seeking the girl out over her shoulder. She squeezed the water from her shift and stepped into her dress. She flung her wet petticoats over the mossy branches of a gum tree that arched over the river. Laughter. “You trying to dig your way to China?” She ran into the forest after the girl and Dalton was alone.
Her wet skirts fluttered in the breeze like sail cloth. The mud hadn’t all washed out. They were becoming the colour of tea. Had they once been white?
White petticoats, he thought, and suddenly there was a girl attached to them. Blonde hair, with freckled skin and firm breasts. Maggie? Sally? Her name was lost to him. All he remembered was the velvety feel of her, his hands exploring every inch of skin. Her breath against his ear, the soft sigh of muslin when the petticoats dropped to the floor. Yes, once he’d been just like any other man.
Grace’s petticoats danced in the wind like there were legs inside them. Dalton stepped closer. Touched. He felt the coarse thread of them; saw the crooked stitching on the hems. Stains that couldn’t be washed away. The grey of river muck, rusty bloodstains, great green streaks where the bush had left its mark. He felt hot and disoriented.
“What in hell do you think you’re doing?” She yanked the skirts from the tree and bundled them into her arms. “In case you didn’t know, it ain’t the done thing to go about playing with women’s underclothes.”
He was vaguely aware what he’d done was wrong. Vaguely aware of these social outlines. He wanted to explain the way the rest of the world dropped away once you left it. Away, with its rules and codes and finely whittled etiquette.
“How long you been there?” she asked icily. “Come to watch, did you?”
Yes, come to watch. The pull towards humanity, towards her, was intoxicating. Terrifying.
He had to put an end to it.
Grace ran into the forest with the petticoats in her arms. “Look Violet,” he heard her say. “Let’s take this branch. We can sweep the floor with it, like we done in Hobart…. This one’s a pretty colour. Why don’t you put it in your hair? All right, angel, you pick one for me too. Mind the bugs now.”
Dalton walked back to the hut and sat at the table. The nose of his rifle stuck out from beneath his sleeping pallet. He stared at it.
Look at her and her helpless predicament. He’d be doing her a favour, putting an end to her hopeless life.
He crawled towards his locker and opened the cartridge box. Five balls. His supplies were getting low. Powder flask; far too close to empty. He poured powder into the rifle and slid in the ball. Slowly, carefully. He was out of practice.
Three rounds a minute, he thought suddenly. Something heaved itself up from deep in his memory. Once, he could fire three rounds a minute. And suddenly he was back in Gibraltar with sunburned cheeks and a rifle across his shoulder, beating rhythmic footsteps in tight-fitting boots.
He’d joined the army out of necessity. What love did a pauper from Kilkenny have for England? His dead mother surely rolled over in her devout Catholic grave, spitting curse of God on you, Alexander. How can you risk your life for that vagrant King George?
Well, sorry Ma, but a man’s got to eat.
He’d been the son of a fleshmonger in Ireland, but as a military private, he was at the very bottom of the pile. He couldn’t stand the state of this world where men were ranked like horses.
Yes, sir. No, sir. He’d never been much good at yes, sir, no, sir. Eat, sleep, shit when you’re told.
“What am I, sir, your fucking dog?”
They had him pegged as a troublemaker from the beginning.
“Do we have a problem, Mr Dalton?”
“Aye, sir. A big problem.”
Knocked out the captain’s teeth with the butt of his rifle.
From the sun-bleached cliffs of Gibraltar to the battered shores of Van Diemen’s Land.
It is therefore adjudged by this court that you be transported upon the seas…
The bush had let Dalton forget he was ever a soldier. A fat black chunk of the past he’d managed to bury. But yes, he felt very comfortable with a rifle in his hands.
He heard Grace’s voice floating on the wind. “Look Violet, see that bird? Ain’t he a colourful one!”
He imagined putting her in the earth. He’d give her a proper grave, a proper burial. After all, it wasn’t really her that was the problem. She’d just gotten in his way. Stepped into a space that was only made for one. Crowded him into the corner of this vast, empty land. And when there was another person about, well then there was that human desire to share. To say all right then, Grace, you’ve told me your story. Are you ready for mine?
Three rounds a minute.
He’d find her a nice spot by the river. Lay her out with her shawl beneath her head like she was just in the deepest of sleeps. Then he’d sit all night in the clearing and listen to the silence. Let himself sink back into a solitary stillness where his memories turned to dust.
He stood. The gun felt heavy in his hand. He wished he’d done it the moment he’d found her. Then, she was just a body. Now she was a real woman, with a story behind her. It was harder this way.
Her head and shoulders rose above the green explosion of tree ferns.
He never fired the gun if he could help it. Who knew how far the sound would travel? Who knew who could be listening? Only if the traps were empty and there was no flour and the wild berries were staved off by ice. Or if he’d ceased to be the world’s only living inhabitant.
The night she’d arrived, he’d pulled the trigger and sent the bullet into the sky so he’d not be tempted to use it. The echo had coursed through his body. Shaken him to the core.
He’d not gone far enough into the bush. He saw that now. The settlers were pressing themselves up against the edges of the forest. Red-coated marines and overseers with their bullwhips. He ought to have gone deeper, higher, further. West. But in the west, the forest rose and darkened. No possums stirred the trees. The birdcalls were few and distant. He’d seen that western bush and it was full of death.
A place man did not survive.
*
Grace watched him bring the rifle to his shoulder. One eye closed, the other squinting down the barrel. Must be possums in that tree, she told herself. Up there in those twisted grey branches.
She knew nothing about this man, she realised. Not a thing. A madman? Murderer? Or just a self-sufficient hunter?
“Violet,” she whispered. “I want you to lie on the ground. Be as still as you can.”
“Like the Mary statue?”
“That’s right, angel, just like the Mary statue.”
She sucked in her breath and stood. “Alexander? Are you hunting?”
He didn’t move. He stood several yards away, poised liked a soldier in battle.
“Nothing in the traps then?” She glanced upwards. “What will you shoot? A possum?”
He opened his eye. Kept the rifle resting against his shoulder.
“Did you not see Violet and I down there?” She tried to push the tremor from her voice. “Let us get back safe to the hut and then you shoot, all right?” She stepped towards him until she was inches from th
e barrel. She swallowed hard and looked him in the eye. “You want to kill me, you’ll have to do it to my face.” She reached out and touched the cold metal. Pushed it downwards. Alexander jerked the rifle and fired into the scrub where Violet was lying. Grace shrieked and dove towards the girl. Violet lay motionless, her eyes wide, fingers clinging to the ferns. Grace pulled her from the ground and squeezed her to her chest. Her hands trembled violently.
“You animal! Why do you want to hurt her? She’s just a little girl!”
Alexander looked towards Grace’s feet. She glanced down too. A thick seam of blood was edging towards her boots. She held Violet out in front of her, searching frantically for any injury. Alexander reached down and lifted the carcass of a wallaby from the scrub. He gripped it in his fist and stepped back over the tangled undergrowth. Violet watched wordlessly, clinging to Grace’s neck. Blood from the dead animal dripped over the ferns.
“We’ve nowhere to go,” Grace called shakily. “I’d leave you, but we ain’t got nowhere else to go.” Tears threatened to spill down her cheeks. “I’m begging you. Please don’t hurt my girl.”
Alexander looked over his shoulder and met her eyes. She looked back into them. The cinder grey of storm clouds. His cheeks and chin were covered in so much woolly black hair she could see little skin. But deep into those eyes she saw. There was loss in them and suffering and shame.
He walked back towards the hut, the wallaby carcass in his fist and the rifle bumping against his thigh. Grace kept her eyes on him until he disappeared. She and Violet clung to one another.
“Are you all right, angel?” she asked finally, her voice husky.
“I don’t like him,” Violet whispered. “I don’t like the bear man.”
Grace carried her to the edge of the clearing, afraid to venture too deep into the forest, afraid to be close to Alexander. She heard him skin the wallaby. Smelled the meat smoking on the fire.
Night fell quickly; cold and solid. Violet lay in Grace’s arms, blinking wearily. A blanket of clouds had drifted over the moon. Grace shivered. Early May. The edge of winter in this upside-down land.
She stroked Violet’s hair. It was greasy and tangled beneath her fingers.
My little angel. I’m sorry for all I’ve done to you.
She kissed her forehead at the place the vase had struck her, feeling the dent of the scar beneath her lips.
“Nanny Grace?” Violet’s voice was thick with sleep. “Do you remember the sideshow? By the river?”
“Yes, angel.”
“What was your favourite thing?”
“My favourite thing?” She hesitated. Truly, she remembered little of the sideshow. The Palace of Curiosities had come to London the day after the earl had sent the vase crashing onto Violet’s head. Grace remembered little but her blinding fury at Harris, her need to get the girls out of the house. She had vague memories of the twins in trimmed coats, their hands clutching hers. A trail of coloured flags, hairy men and tattooed women. The details were blurred by anger. And then, her own guilt: Violet complaining her head ached and Grace knowing she ought to have been home in bed.
That night, Harris had ranted and screamed, all red-cheeked and brandy breath.
“What were you doing taking her out, Grace? What in hell were you thinking?”
“My favourite thing was the mermaid lady,” said Violet. “I liked her long hair.”
Grace was glad she remembered the sideshow fondly. “Perhaps when we go back to London we can visit her again.”
Violet fell asleep, limp and heavy in Grace’s lap. She wrapped the girl in her cloak and lay her on the mossy ground. She rolled her tired shoulders, stretched her neck. Violet was too big, too heavy. Grace couldn’t carry her much longer.
She could hear Alexander clattering about in his wooden chest.
The hut was too small for three of them. Shelter for three, food for three. A much different sum than food and shelter for one. They were a burden to be shot at like wild dogs. But where could they go? She’d be locked up if she went back to Hobart Town. And heaven only knew how many more days until the forest cleared and showed the next settlement.
She’d wait out here until Alexander slept. Give him a little of his solitude back.
With each crackle of the undergrowth, her heart sped. The darkness was terrifying. She kept her eyes on the few flimsy stars, trying to drink in their light.
It must have been close to midnight when Alexander strode from the hut, his boots missing Violet’s head by an inch.
“Christ! Be careful!”
Violet woke at Grace’s screeching and crawled into her lap. She watched Alexander with distrusting eyes. He stared at the patch of earth where the girl had been sleeping.
Grace swallowed hard. “I’m sure it ain’t easy for you to be sharing your home. And, truly, I appreciate all you done for us. Soon as I figure out what to do we’ll be gone. I promise.”
He held out two pieces of smoked meat.
“We ain’t hungry.”
Alexander nodded towards the hut. Beneath the door Grace could see the fire’s orange glow.
“You want us to come in?”
He nodded.
Grace held Violet to her chest. “Did you mean to shoot us?”
Alexander gestured to the hut again. Grace hesitated. A throaty grunt echoed from the trees beyond the woodpile. She stood slowly, Violet’s feet dangling down past her waist. She followed Alexander inside. The rifle leaned against the wall.
Grace paused in the doorway. “Tell me you ain’t going to shoot us in the night. Tell me I can trust you. Just one word. Please.”
He opened the chamber of the rifle and pulled out the ball. He had reloaded while she had been outside, Grace realised sickly. He pressed the bullet into her palm.
She managed a faint smile. “Thank you.” Hesitantly, she laid Violet onto their sleeping pallet and curled up beside her. “I’ll not say a word,” she promised. “Quiet as a mouse, I swear it.”
Her hand around the bullet, she closed her eyes and tried to push her breathing into the same sleepy rhythm as Violet’s. She heard Alexander poke the fire.
A shallow trust, but what choice did she have? Take away that shallow trust and she was completely alone.
VI
Standing Orders from Lt-Gov. William Sorrell to Lt John Cutherbertson, commandant of Macquarie Harbour
Saturday 8th December 1821
‘You will consider that the active, unremitting employment of every individual in very hard labour is the grand and main design of your settlement. They must dread the very idea of being sent there … You must find work and labour, even if it consists in opening cavities and filling them up again … Prisoners on trial declared they would rather suffer death than be sent back to Macquarie Harbour. It is this feeling I am most anxious to be kept alive.’
“Violet?” Grace burst outside, tugging on an ankle boot. Dalton watched from where he sat on the tree stump, cannikin of tea in hand.
“Violet? Where are you, angel?” She circled the hut. “When I woke this morning she weren’t in her bed. Have you seen her?”
Dalton shook his head.
“You didn’t think to wake me when you saw she weren’t here?” Urgency rose in her voice. “Where is she?” She strode around the tiny hut again as if she could possibly have missed her the last time.
“Violet!”
The calls turned to shrieks. Dalton looked down at the mud and the trails of prints leading out of the hut.
Grace’s footprints. His footprints. No little girl’s footprints.
Grace’s eyes followed his to the trails of prints. She grabbed his collar and shook. Tea slopped across his trousers.
“You carried her! You took her!” She shoved him hard. “What have you done with her? I never should have trusted you!”
He let her punch and shriek, her arms, skirts, hair, all wild and flying.
She ran into the bush. “Violet!”
The shouting
grew distant.
Dalton followed. Didn’t know why. He wanted his silence back, but curse of God on her, his legs wanted to follow. They walked, then ran towards Violet, Violet.
When he caught up to her, her eyes had overflowed with messy tears. “She wanted to go back to Hobart. She thought her father would be angry at us for being late home. I’m so afraid she tried to find her way back.” A deep, gasping breath. “She’s just a baby. She ain’t going to last a minute out there on her own.”
Her suspicion of him gone.
Did she truly believe he hadn’t carried her out of the hut and cut her throat? Of course, it was easier to convince herself he was just an irresponsible bastard who’d turned a blind eye as a girl lost herself in the wilderness. The alternative was to believe she was alone with a madman who had her child’s blood on his hands. He’d have chosen to believe the easier option too, if he hadn’t seen what men were capable of. Now choosing the easier option was just naivety.
They searched the entire day, following the river as it narrowed and swelled. Grace beat the brush with a long stick, scouring the land for any sign, any clue. Dalton followed wearily, sure they’d not find a thing.
“She’s afraid of the river,” Grace kept saying. “She wouldn’t have come this way.” But she kept along the edge of the water, thrashing at the reeds, calling her name.
When the light turned orange, Dalton stopped walking and pointed towards the hut. His stomach growled. No point them spending the night out there.
Grace’s tears had stopped several hours ago, but at the suggestion of turning back, another great sob welled up from her chest. “She’s gone, Alexander, just gone.”
Yes, gone like a ghost. Left no trace; not a bootlace, or a button, or a thread of hair. But nor had she left a drop of blood, or scrabbled finger marks, or any cause for Grace to lose hope that she’d stumble back to them, disoriented, hungry and stained with tears.
Forgotten Places Page 4